Brown City Dead Lake Volume 1

From the city that brought a burning river (Cuyahoga) to your history books!

Sims Park in Euclid, Ohio is home to a pier that is designed to camouflage a sewer outfall. On this day my daughter and I find it to be billowing out water visibly laden with sediment. My daughter knows this is our communities source of drinking water.

A near by dead fish is an ominous sign, and the source of her first question. She asks "are there still some of those fish around". I tell her "The sheephead, yes, its not extinct, if thats what you mean". Only I have not the heart to tell her about the unknown disease wiping them out in our lakes western basin.

Her next observation is "its a good think Lake Erie does not have this", referring to the pollution before her 4 year old eyes. The only problem of course is that this is our great Lake Erie we are looking at. =-(

2007 Cleveland Home and Garden Show - Green in more ways than one?

Above you see Erica W's REpower Solutions booth. Apparently she got a great deal of interest. She talked her way to loosing her voice on Saturday at the show. Unfortunately for the "green area" there were many empty tables, and few staff around at the non-profits tables. Of course some famous former manufacturers of lead paint had a token banner and info at the green building area as well (see below for the photo of the logo with the paint spill 'covering the earth')
One of the 'model homes' had solar from dovetail on the roof, and my fav, marmoleum linoleum on the floor in the 'bonus' room. The home had passive solar design, and a rain garden. Beyond that i bet the home theater inside burned more juice than the PV could crank out on a good Cleveland summer day! Rightsized, uh-huh.

There were no shortage of folks hawking 'energy star' environmentally preferable insulated concrete form (ICF) building products either. I counted at least 5
You would think they could drum up local staff to 'man' this table of theirs at the 'Green' area.

Max Hays High Science Fair - Jan 31, 2007 Cleveland, Ohio

This past week I had the opportunity to judge a science fair at Max Hayes High School.

Other judges were present from NASA, Swagelok, and a variety of other locations. Quite the learning experience. Entries were from 9-12 graders.









Global warming I must say was getting more attention from the 10th graders than the Executive Branch of our legislature!











Hypothesis: Garbage is overfilling our landfills!
Root Cause: It is not going away fast enough

I heart the logic train on this one! ALL ABOARD!















Who needs mulitmillion dollar turbines as drivers of economic development when you can make them out of styrofoam cups, and McDonalds straws. This cat's project talked of how he stayed up all night counting the rotations to see if wind really does blow harder in the later hours.

Hell you should have seen all the "green" homes built out of Dow foam products at the Home Show!











This entry involved taking an aquarium of water and heating it up. yeah! Along the lines of our current administrations
'cutting edge' climate research!












Ahhh the timeless mantra:

Reduce
Reuse
Recycle

I was hoping to see this here.












You dont need any notes on these... its just a reflection of what is in the hearts and minds of 9-12th graders in our city.










What is the effect of acid rain?
What local businesses cause most of it?
What local businesses externalize those costs?
What local businesses are losing ground?

Great Lakes Bioneers Cleveland - Planning Retreat a Success!

An exciting day it was for the steering committee of Great Lakes Bioneers Cleveland. Most of the members were on hand for the initial planning retreat. It was facilitated by Gloria Rivera and Paula Cathcart, the organizers from the Great Lakes Bioneers Detroit location. Planning is in gear!

Great Lakes Bioneers Cleveland recently received approval to host a beaming site. CSU will host the event via live satellite uplink from the primary conference site in San Raphael, CA. More soon.. www.bioneers.org